JakeT

Life in the miserable lane. 

Made and Fitted the “new” rear plate

 

 

 

I’ll try and get along to this, albeit I seem to be very busy. But I’d like to attend something AS related.

Well a day of mixed emotions as I am heading to port (Schiedam) to demobilise for the last time. Sad to realise it will be the last time I will look closely at rigs from the sea after 35 years - glad it is all over! Tomorrow I fly home and Saturday morning I start my retirement! It should mean more pictures of cars and less of the sea on here.....
The sun setting on my career;

 

^^ wot e said. I usually overfill it and raise the nose. Run it with the cap off so it can’t build too much pressure and give it a few revs.

Focus on the positives, you’ve got this. You’ve fitted new parts and it will be fine. Just raise up the nose to bleed it up. I’ve done plenty, and messed a few up with no dire consequences.

Blower to full heat and speed 4.
All vents open.
Take the rad cap off and stick a 2L bottle (with bottom cut off) neck first into the rad.
Fill the rad and bottle to the top. This gives you a head of water to push any airlocks out.
Start the car and let it idle.
Massage hoses Inc those into heater matrix if possible.
After a couple of mins raise the revs to 2k rpm and hold for a min or two.
Keep an eye on the bottle to check for any burps/bubbles and the coolant level dropping.
Back to idle and check for heat.
Repeat a couple of times.
 
Always keep an eye on the coolant level and temp gauge.

Top radiator hose for the BMW has arrived!
It now has some coolant in it.
I followed the HBOL method of pouring it in slowly until it came out the bleed hole, then put the bleed screw back in and squeeze the hoses.
I still wanted to take it outside and park it facing uphill with the engine running then crack the bleed screw ever so slightly.
 
Instead:

D'oh!
At least I took the opportunity to absolutely cake the battery tray in kurust.

Fortunately the weather did indeed turn out to be mostly great this weekend (it actually felt like spring, imagine that) which means I could finally tackle ripping out the old smelly interior of the E65. The headliner was by far the worst of it all and impossible to safe:



Fortunately I'm the expert for BMW headliners at this point (5th or 6th time I remove an E65 or E39 headliner) so things went pretty smoothly until one of the damn seat rails of the driver seat decide to seize up again, which meant I akwardly had to disconnect it from the rest of the seat base which probably took the best of 2 hours of my time yesterday...

With both seats and the sunroof glass out the headliner was gone in no time:

This is when I noticed that BMW decided to install subwoofers directly underneath the seats. And to nobody's surprise plenty of water made its way into that as well. 

Amazingly it still seemed to work perfectly fine despite being submerged, the wiring hardness and connectors certainly were very well insulated. And thats where the difference between BMW and brands like Alfa lies, alot of this stuff is surprisingly solidly engineered while even in perfect conditions the electrics in the latter are a nightmare.

As always with the seats out now was a good time to remove all the grime you'll never otherwise reach underneath. With the seat removal such a pain I didn't want to take any chances so I actually ordered a replacement woofer on ebay for a total of a whopping 27 quid incl. postage.

While faffing around with the subwoofer I noticed a cable that didn't quite look OEM to me. I have been wondering what another wire leading up the driver c-pillar and suddently ending right in the middle of nowhere was before. Well, turns out one of the previous owners had a tracker installed in the car...

Well, it is no more. It's always very satisfying removing junk wiring, one of the cables had its insulation stripped which cannot have helped much with the onboard electronics.

Well, 2 solid days of faffing around, transfering control modules from one set of seats to another, testing and carefully reassembling everything later we now have a headliner and two replacement (identical to the old) front seats again. And the best of all, thanks to the breaker 750i it cost me exactly nothing.

The driver seat isnt fully bolted in yet as the subwoofer can only really be installed with it out, hopefully it'll be here soon. I also won't properly install the C- and A-pillar trims yet as more work will be needed for other reasons in these areas. Seeing the before and after photos I'm quite satisfied with what I managed to get done though. If I hadn't done the front seats and all the other while I'm in there jobs this could have been done in 2-3 hours.

I'm probably going to request to have the windshield replace before putting the A-pillar trims on one last time. I got comprehensive cover with Admiral, has anyone however experienced their premium going up because of a windshield claim? It won't take long before this will be right in the driver's view.

I saw this earlier so had to find the Volvo collection, to bring myself to speed. Few points:
1. Sleeper trains ROCK.
2. Volvo V70 T6s ROCK
3. German cars that aren’t a boring shade of grey/silver/black ROCK.
 
Well bought. GT models with a reasonable spec are rare, and the late mk7 is probably the best golf to buy currently. Looks like the dealer took care of you well, too! I’m sure it will be reliable and a good driver too, also so you don’t have to take it to Uncle Arnie’s too frequently.

IT'S THE WRONG V, GROMIT!

Vol… 
Is supposed to be followed by “vo” not “kswagen”

As it’s known, ‘the old bus’ went straight through its MOT last week, and the insurance renewal for it was £30 down, so I had to buy something, as a result. I’m a sucker for period correct accessories, and spotting a genuine BMW OSRAM spare bulb kit, I came over all @LightBulbFun and it had to be bought.


How lean the number of models used to be…!

With the weather actually being decent this afternoon I decided to get stuck in to confirming that my theory was correct regarding what was going on with the power unit in the Trabant.
With even just the first bit of the cowling removed and the first momentary visual inspection it looked as though my suspicion of a head gasket failure on the number 1 cylinder was likely to be correct.

The offending cylinder, if you can't tell by the fact that it's covered in oily slime, is to the right in this photo.  The amount of gunge on there suggests to me that this might actually have been weeping for quite a while before the gasket actually let go completely.
Fast forward ten minutes and we've got rather better access.

The rear two nuts were definitely on the loose side I'd say - as were all four exhaust manifold nuts.
Rotating the engine by hand you could very clearly hear a wheezing noise coming from the top of that cylinder rather than being clearly able to feel compression from the other side. 
Once the head was removed this was one of those occasions where we did have a very obvious smoking gun regarding the nature of the failure.

Yep, that gasket has had it!

At least that's a clear failure and an easily replaced part.  I'm just waiting on the new gaskets to arrive (I'll do both while I'm in there as it just makes sense I reckon). 
The bore looks healthy enough to my admittedly not particularly well trained eyes.  There are a couple of small score marks but nothing I can feel, and this isn't a brand new engine and there's nothing here which seems like cause for alarm.  My intention is to replace both head gaskets, give the engine a good external clean once everything is back together to try to get rid of some of the oily slime coating it, then to just put it back together and resume driving. 
I had been expecting the fan shroud to basically just be a box to direct air towards the engine, so was quite surprised by how heavy it was when I removed it.  Turns out that there are quite a few more bits to it than I thought - there's been a lot more thought given to the air flow over the engine than I expected.  The air paths for the heads and cylinders are completely separate, and there are baffles in place to ensure that as little air is wasted as possible.  The cowl is shaped to get cooling down as close to the exhaust ports as is really practical as well.

I'll try to grab a shot of that in better lighting so it's clearer before it goes back together.
Took me 21 minutes from stepping out the door to having the head off and the old gasket removed.  Could probably do that quicker next time as I know which direction you need to pull the cowling to get it off now as that probably wasted me five minutes or so.  Can't complain at that... I've had it take me longer to get into things to get the head off a lawnmower before!
Got some further work done on the Rover as well, but that's going to have to wait until after I've made dinner to be written up.

My dad has just sent a photo of one of their near neighbours having the engine removed from a c4 grand picasso on the drive. Seems a bit drastic!

Update time! I unexpectedly had some freetime yesterday and used it to reassemble the new front bumper and put it on the car. I've picked up a cheap set of new OEM indicators when someone in the FB group cleared out his parts hoard so those went in as well. New ones on top vs. old. Let me know if anyone needs one.

Remember when I said any job on this car takes multiple times as long as it does on other cars? Reattaching the bumper to the mounting brackets revealed the pinnacle of moronic engineering. It was already a pain to get the mounting bolts off the first time. Due to them only being losely stuck into the square holes of the crash bar it was near impossible to get them fastened again. Nothing is holding the studs the nuts go onto on the bar. You also cannot access the rear of the studs with the bumper cover on, which you cannot install when the bar is on the car if you were bolting that on first. You cannot even hold the upper studs in place by sandwiching your hand between bar and bumper cover when the headlights are still in, which you cannot reinstall with the bumper bolted on. You cant use anything to hold them in place as aligning the studs with the mounting bracket holes requires some shoving that would immediately push them into the bumper, never to be seen again.

All this shit drove me absolutely nuts and Im honestly surpised that this bumper is still in one piece at this time. You would need to weld the studs onto the bar to ever have any chance of bolting the bumper back on the car (no indication that they ever were). It boggles my mind that something as basic as mounting a bumper can be such an utter shitshow. And this theme is consistent across almost everything I had to sort on this car, nothing had the same thought put into it as almost anything else I've been working on, outside of the Alfa which is right behind the Opel in poor engineering decisions. There absolutely is a reason why some makes and models are destined for the scrapyard and this is currently doing its best to follow the rest of them.

At least the paint match seems spot on.
I saw that the backseat that was folded down got a little moldy for some reason, it somehow must have trapped water from somewhere underneath it. Lets just say that most people would have thrown it straight into the bin. This was AFTER the first step of vacuuming...

An hour with the drill brush and extractor later and the rear seats are looking okay again. Disaster averted. I gave everything inside a vaccum but theres a lot more cleaning to be done to get this interior into decent shape, I think I never really went all in on this one. Headliner is starting to drop so that will need doing eventually.

In more pleasant news, I finally got the E65 back. It really only was the driver rear spring that needed doing in the end, which hopefully explained some of the clunking I occasionally heard before which somehow got missed at the MOT. It wasn't even expensive to have it sorted, a job I gladly passed on. The original reason for bringing it to the garage was to continue the service history. And while the last entry has been 16 years ago now the gap in mileage is rather small. I might add a note that filters and collant have been done shortly before.

Needs a wash now. I'll hopefully start working on replacing the interior next weekend if the weather stays nice enough.

I've also paid a visit to the Z3 today, just to start it up and charge the battery just in case it needs doing, it's been parked up since November. Started right up! Not having it under a cover was a mistake as birds shat all over it though. At least it didnt seem to leave any marks on the paint.

Looking forward to getting this back on the road again once the salt is gone!
Some bonus Touring action which continues to be a great workhorse.

I ended up doing some tinkering today, unplanned. I was home alone and couldn’t go out as we were waiting on a cherry picker to be delivered, so I thought I’d check into why there’s a mild belt noise from ‘the old bus’. My winter work on it was to look at the fanbelt bits and sort them out, while it’s seeing very little usage.
 
First, whip the fan out, and various plastic piece, and find it amusing how basic this plastic piece looks on early E36s. later ones are better. This looks almost plastic welded together.

 
Take a picture of the belts so as not to forget how the belt is routed (not that this one is complex).

Spin the ‘deflection pulley’ and tensioner pulley and find they’re both free spinning, and one is even a little loose. I suppose after 30 years they’ve done their part. Then receive a call that thy can’t drop it off due to the weather (?), so it will have to be next week. Realise I can go out, and decide to nip to our friends at euro nobheads for a couple of bits. A new deflection pulley and tensioner. Amazingly they got the right parts, and weren’t even that rude about it. Good quality bits, as this is a nice, low mileage car. BMW now recommend fitting a hydraulic tensioner, and sell a kit to convert it. While I’m sure it’s better somehow I never had troubles with the sprung ones, and they’re £50 cheaper. If this one fails I’ll fit a hydraulic one.

The original tensioner was a git to get out. It was close to removing the front pulley, but I was hesitant to do this. With 1/4” tools and a tiny bit of bolt rounding it came out. I had to take the pulley off of the tensioner to get better access. This shows how much easier it is to get the newer style ones in.

 
New bits back in, and belt on. I think the belt is just barely long enough, the current one is a 1540mm, and a 1555 would be easier to slip over the tensioner.

 
Put all of the other bits back on, test drive tomorrow as everyone was home now and I had to help out with dinner.

I ended up doing some tinkering today, unplanned. I was home alone and couldn’t go out as we were waiting on a cherry picker to be delivered, so I thought I’d check into why there’s a mild belt noise from ‘the old bus’. My winter work on it was to look at the fanbelt bits and sort them out, while it’s seeing very little usage.
 
First, whip the fan out, and various plastic piece, and find it amusing how basic this plastic piece looks on early E36s. later ones are better. This looks almost plastic welded together.

 
Take a picture of the belts so as not to forget how the belt is routed (not that this one is complex).

Spin the ‘deflection pulley’ and tensioner pulley and find they’re both free spinning, and one is even a little loose. I suppose after 30 years they’ve done their part. Then receive a call that thy can’t drop it off due to the weather (?), so it will have to be next week. Realise I can go out, and decide to nip to our friends at euro nobheads for a couple of bits. A new deflection pulley and tensioner. Amazingly they got the right parts, and weren’t even that rude about it. Good quality bits, as this is a nice, low mileage car. BMW now recommend fitting a hydraulic tensioner, and sell a kit to convert it. While I’m sure it’s better somehow I never had troubles with the sprung ones, and they’re £50 cheaper. If this one fails I’ll fit a hydraulic one.

The original tensioner was a git to get out. It was close to removing the front pulley, but I was hesitant to do this. With 1/4” tools and a tiny bit of bolt rounding it came out. I had to take the pulley off of the tensioner to get better access. This shows how much easier it is to get the newer style ones in.

 
New bits back in, and belt on. I think the belt is just barely long enough, the current one is a 1540mm, and a 1555 would be easier to slip over the tensioner.

 
Put all of the other bits back on, test drive tomorrow as everyone was home now and I had to help out with dinner.

Yep.
I've done this a few times on E36s too.
 
I have a lead on an industrial quantity of neat coolant for a very good price, but it'll be a few days yet.
In the meantime I've ordered up a correct new top hose for the grand sum of £9.
I'm tempted to pour some plain water in today just to check for leaks without even running the engine.

I ended up doing some tinkering today, unplanned. I was home alone and couldn’t go out as we were waiting on a cherry picker to be delivered, so I thought I’d check into why there’s a mild belt noise from ‘the old bus’. My winter work on it was to look at the fanbelt bits and sort them out, while it’s seeing very little usage.
 
First, whip the fan out, and various plastic piece, and find it amusing how basic this plastic piece looks on early E36s. later ones are better. This looks almost plastic welded together.

 
Take a picture of the belts so as not to forget how the belt is routed (not that this one is complex).

Spin the ‘deflection pulley’ and tensioner pulley and find they’re both free spinning, and one is even a little loose. I suppose after 30 years they’ve done their part. Then receive a call that thy can’t drop it off due to the weather (?), so it will have to be next week. Realise I can go out, and decide to nip to our friends at euro nobheads for a couple of bits. A new deflection pulley and tensioner. Amazingly they got the right parts, and weren’t even that rude about it. Good quality bits, as this is a nice, low mileage car. BMW now recommend fitting a hydraulic tensioner, and sell a kit to convert it. While I’m sure it’s better somehow I never had troubles with the sprung ones, and they’re £50 cheaper. If this one fails I’ll fit a hydraulic one.

The original tensioner was a git to get out. It was close to removing the front pulley, but I was hesitant to do this. With 1/4” tools and a tiny bit of bolt rounding it came out. I had to take the pulley off of the tensioner to get better access. This shows how much easier it is to get the newer style ones in.

 
New bits back in, and belt on. I think the belt is just barely long enough, the current one is a 1540mm, and a 1555 would be easier to slip over the tensioner.

 
Put all of the other bits back on, test drive tomorrow as everyone was home now and I had to help out with dinner.

Focus on the positives, you’ve got this. You’ve fitted new parts and it will be fine. Just raise up the nose to bleed it up. I’ve done plenty, and messed a few up with no dire consequences.

I ended up doing some tinkering today, unplanned. I was home alone and couldn’t go out as we were waiting on a cherry picker to be delivered, so I thought I’d check into why there’s a mild belt noise from ‘the old bus’. My winter work on it was to look at the fanbelt bits and sort them out, while it’s seeing very little usage.
 
First, whip the fan out, and various plastic piece, and find it amusing how basic this plastic piece looks on early E36s. later ones are better. This looks almost plastic welded together.

 
Take a picture of the belts so as not to forget how the belt is routed (not that this one is complex).

Spin the ‘deflection pulley’ and tensioner pulley and find they’re both free spinning, and one is even a little loose. I suppose after 30 years they’ve done their part. Then receive a call that thy can’t drop it off due to the weather (?), so it will have to be next week. Realise I can go out, and decide to nip to our friends at euro nobheads for a couple of bits. A new deflection pulley and tensioner. Amazingly they got the right parts, and weren’t even that rude about it. Good quality bits, as this is a nice, low mileage car. BMW now recommend fitting a hydraulic tensioner, and sell a kit to convert it. While I’m sure it’s better somehow I never had troubles with the sprung ones, and they’re £50 cheaper. If this one fails I’ll fit a hydraulic one.

The original tensioner was a git to get out. It was close to removing the front pulley, but I was hesitant to do this. With 1/4” tools and a tiny bit of bolt rounding it came out. I had to take the pulley off of the tensioner to get better access. This shows how much easier it is to get the newer style ones in.

 
New bits back in, and belt on. I think the belt is just barely long enough, the current one is a 1540mm, and a 1555 would be easier to slip over the tensioner.

 
Put all of the other bits back on, test drive tomorrow as everyone was home now and I had to help out with dinner.

I ended up doing some tinkering today, unplanned. I was home alone and couldn’t go out as we were waiting on a cherry picker to be delivered, so I thought I’d check into why there’s a mild belt noise from ‘the old bus’. My winter work on it was to look at the fanbelt bits and sort them out, while it’s seeing very little usage.
 
First, whip the fan out, and various plastic piece, and find it amusing how basic this plastic piece looks on early E36s. later ones are better. This looks almost plastic welded together.

 
Take a picture of the belts so as not to forget how the belt is routed (not that this one is complex).

Spin the ‘deflection pulley’ and tensioner pulley and find they’re both free spinning, and one is even a little loose. I suppose after 30 years they’ve done their part. Then receive a call that thy can’t drop it off due to the weather (?), so it will have to be next week. Realise I can go out, and decide to nip to our friends at euro nobheads for a couple of bits. A new deflection pulley and tensioner. Amazingly they got the right parts, and weren’t even that rude about it. Good quality bits, as this is a nice, low mileage car. BMW now recommend fitting a hydraulic tensioner, and sell a kit to convert it. While I’m sure it’s better somehow I never had troubles with the sprung ones, and they’re £50 cheaper. If this one fails I’ll fit a hydraulic one.

The original tensioner was a git to get out. It was close to removing the front pulley, but I was hesitant to do this. With 1/4” tools and a tiny bit of bolt rounding it came out. I had to take the pulley off of the tensioner to get better access. This shows how much easier it is to get the newer style ones in.

 
New bits back in, and belt on. I think the belt is just barely long enough, the current one is a 1540mm, and a 1555 would be easier to slip over the tensioner.

 
Put all of the other bits back on, test drive tomorrow as everyone was home now and I had to help out with dinner.

I ended up doing some tinkering today, unplanned. I was home alone and couldn’t go out as we were waiting on a cherry picker to be delivered, so I thought I’d check into why there’s a mild belt noise from ‘the old bus’. My winter work on it was to look at the fanbelt bits and sort them out, while it’s seeing very little usage.
 
First, whip the fan out, and various plastic piece, and find it amusing how basic this plastic piece looks on early E36s. later ones are better. This looks almost plastic welded together.

 
Take a picture of the belts so as not to forget how the belt is routed (not that this one is complex).

Spin the ‘deflection pulley’ and tensioner pulley and find they’re both free spinning, and one is even a little loose. I suppose after 30 years they’ve done their part. Then receive a call that thy can’t drop it off due to the weather (?), so it will have to be next week. Realise I can go out, and decide to nip to our friends at euro nobheads for a couple of bits. A new deflection pulley and tensioner. Amazingly they got the right parts, and weren’t even that rude about it. Good quality bits, as this is a nice, low mileage car. BMW now recommend fitting a hydraulic tensioner, and sell a kit to convert it. While I’m sure it’s better somehow I never had troubles with the sprung ones, and they’re £50 cheaper. If this one fails I’ll fit a hydraulic one.

The original tensioner was a git to get out. It was close to removing the front pulley, but I was hesitant to do this. With 1/4” tools and a tiny bit of bolt rounding it came out. I had to take the pulley off of the tensioner to get better access. This shows how much easier it is to get the newer style ones in.

 
New bits back in, and belt on. I think the belt is just barely long enough, the current one is a 1540mm, and a 1555 would be easier to slip over the tensioner.

 
Put all of the other bits back on, test drive tomorrow as everyone was home now and I had to help out with dinner.

I ended up doing some tinkering today, unplanned. I was home alone and couldn’t go out as we were waiting on a cherry picker to be delivered, so I thought I’d check into why there’s a mild belt noise from ‘the old bus’. My winter work on it was to look at the fanbelt bits and sort them out, while it’s seeing very little usage.
 
First, whip the fan out, and various plastic piece, and find it amusing how basic this plastic piece looks on early E36s. later ones are better. This looks almost plastic welded together.

 
Take a picture of the belts so as not to forget how the belt is routed (not that this one is complex).

Spin the ‘deflection pulley’ and tensioner pulley and find they’re both free spinning, and one is even a little loose. I suppose after 30 years they’ve done their part. Then receive a call that thy can’t drop it off due to the weather (?), so it will have to be next week. Realise I can go out, and decide to nip to our friends at euro nobheads for a couple of bits. A new deflection pulley and tensioner. Amazingly they got the right parts, and weren’t even that rude about it. Good quality bits, as this is a nice, low mileage car. BMW now recommend fitting a hydraulic tensioner, and sell a kit to convert it. While I’m sure it’s better somehow I never had troubles with the sprung ones, and they’re £50 cheaper. If this one fails I’ll fit a hydraulic one.

The original tensioner was a git to get out. It was close to removing the front pulley, but I was hesitant to do this. With 1/4” tools and a tiny bit of bolt rounding it came out. I had to take the pulley off of the tensioner to get better access. This shows how much easier it is to get the newer style ones in.

 
New bits back in, and belt on. I think the belt is just barely long enough, the current one is a 1540mm, and a 1555 would be easier to slip over the tensioner.

 
Put all of the other bits back on, test drive tomorrow as everyone was home now and I had to help out with dinner.